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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Culinary Pride

Typically in the back room of our board of education meetings, there is a platter of cheese and crackers, freshly cut fruit and chocolate chip cookies to sustain us through the long evenings. I always enjoy the havarti and gouda cheeses and the pineapple. I never care that I can’t eat the cookies or crackers. Nobody really needs chocolate chip cookies at midnight. Come to think of it, none of our arteries need cheese at that hour either.

Earlier this year a fellow board member and his son were diagnosed with celiac disease. That’s a tough transition for a kid in his sophomore year in college, but I guess he’s doing pretty well. Last night, my fellow board member brought us some gluten-free cookies for late night board meeting munchies that his son had baked! These were my very first cookies at a board of ed meeting and I was pretty impressed.

They were an oatmeal, chocolate chip cookie and they had a chewy, chocolate taste. I think it is very exceptional that a 20 year old man experimented in the kitchen to come up with a cookie. His dad said he went shopping at Whole Foods for ingredients and then whipped up a batch.

It served as a reminder that I need to further encourage the kitchen experimentation of my own celiac. Cooking is an important survival skill for someone with celiac disease. My son’s favorite snack is to “bake” himself a Food Tek cinnamon coffee cake. It’s a few simple steps…adding water into the mix, pouring the batter into the mold and hitting start on the microwave. The important thing is that a nine year old can do it all by himself and he is very pleased with the warm cake that he makes.

There is a bit a pride that goes into fending for oneself. It doesn’t have to be culinary artistry, sometimes an invented cookie recipe or a microwave cake is satisfying in more ways than one.Kendall Egan